He remained friendly with Scott Smith after they drifted apart because of his immersion in politics. His most fateful relationship was with Dan White, a seemingly straight member of the Board of Supervisors, a Catholic who said homosexuality was a sin and campaigned with his wife, kids and the American flag. Some people may argue there is a gay soul but I believe we all share the same souls.

Few characters could be more different, few characters could seem more real. Harvey Milk deserved a better film than this. Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter. He ran for the Board of Supervisors three times before being elected in 1977. I am openly heterosexual, but this is the first time I have ever said so. All the right things happen, plot-wise -- a formerly closeted Milk starts a new, out life in 70s-era San Francisco with his hunky younger boyfriend; the hostility of neighboring Irish businesses in the Castro district where they settle, plus the alternating bullying and neglect of the SF Police Department, stir Milk to run for office. "Milk" tells Harvey Milk's story as one of a transformed life, a victory for individual freedom over state persecution, and a political and social cause.

A researcher at Bache & Co. and a Goldwater Republican, Milk became involved with a hippie theater company in Greenwich Village and began to edge the closet door ajar and wave out tentatively.

He creates a character with infinite attention to detail, and from the heart out. Yet Milk is curiously placid and sterile, even prudish. ©2020 Verizon Media.

Milk didn't enter politics as much as he was pushed in by the evidence of his own eyes. He became a fiery orator. Interlaced are his romantic adventures.

Note: What Harvey Milk helped make possible: a very brief, extraordinary speech by current San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rfea8iEGNw.

Even violent scenes are gloved. And it comes as the result of one man's decisions in life. Tap here to turn on desktop notifications to get the news sent straight to you. And I'm sorry that Van Sant didn't think we could handle the truth.

In 1977, it was not so.

I want fresh salt poured on the wounds of Proposition 8 so that queers will stop apologizing for being angry with the Mormon and Catholic Church, and for boycotting supporters. I want fresh rage directed at Barack Obama for thinking that including a gay marching band in his inauguration proceedings compensates for his having invited a notorious homophobe and anti-Semite to give the invocation.

Other than the occasional employment of Harvey Milk's genitals, what makes this character different?

He campaigned for a gay rights ordinance. "Milk," from an original screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, tells the story of its hero's rise from disaffected middle-aged hippie to national symbol. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. This is actual footage. Gay history -- unedited -- is ugly, angry, and violent. There's the requisite hate crime scene, plus allusions to gay teens being forced out of their homes and into the streets of the nearest big city by homophobic parents and classmates.

Not long before seeing "Milk," I viewed his work in "Dead Man Walking" again.

Later, when Milk directs Jones to gather a mob and march them to City Hall after one of Anita Bryant's victories (so Milk can show up to act as peacemaker in front of the press), we get another distant shot of a faceless, strangely lethargic crowd.

Few characters could be more different, few characters could seem more real. An awkward alliance formed between Milk and White, who was probably gay and used their areas of political agreement as a beard. Part of HuffPost Entertainment. He organized.

And every character, including the runaway teen Milk befriends -- Cleve Jones, who survives by turning tricks on the notoriously seedy and dangerous (though never depicted) Polk Street -- looks freshly showered and dressed by the Gap. Sean Penn never tries to show Harvey Milk as a hero, and never needs to. But so powerful was the movement he helped inspire that I believe his appeal has now pretty much been heeded, save in certain backward regions of the land that a wise gay or lesbian should soon deprive of their blessings. Not that it doesn't try, kind of.

It's police dragging us out of cellar bars and down to the station to gang fuck the femmes and face-rape the butches, queens, and trannies. Gus Van Sant's film begins with Harvey Milk at 48, reflecting into his tape recorder about a personal journey that began at 40.

The prudent thing would have been to cut ties with Lira, but Milk was almost compulsively supportive. So was Rosa Parks. We never see more than a tablespoon of blood at a time. He shows what such an ordinary man can achieve.

Where's the passion? Why can't gays simply be gays, and "unopenly gays" be whatever they want to seem? It was a bully pulpit from which to challenge rabble rousers like the gay-hating Anita Bryant. The 10-second sex scene we only partially see in a dark bedroom between Milk and a boyfriend is all slap and tickle. Not that it doesn't try, kind of.



There is a remarkable shot near the end, showing a candlelight march reaching as far as the eyes can see. Rated R (Van Sant ends his film before the White Night riots, where queers burned police cars after the lenient sentencing of Milk's murderer.). Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. All the right things happen, plot-wise -- a formerly closeted Milk starts a new, out life in 70s-era San Francisco with his hunky younger boyfriend; the hostility of neighboring Irish businesses in the Castro district where they settle, plus the alternating bullying and neglect of the SF Police Department, stir Milk to run for office.

It's Stonewall, where we showered raiding police with bottles, locked them in the bar, and set it afire. Audiences need to see the film's opening sequence -- silent archival footage depicting police bar raids from the 40s, 50s, and 60s, with men shielding their faces from the cameras even as they are shoved into vans, handcuffed, or held in waiting rooms. Ultimately I'm glad that even this pasteurized, homogenized Milk is out there. He developed a flair for publicity. He forged an alliance including liberals, unions, longshoremen, teachers, Latinos, blacks and others with common cause. He had a weakness for befriending wet puppies: at first, Cleve Jones (Emile Hirsch), who became another community organizer. It's military witch hunts; suicides and "experimental therapies," from lobotomies and electro-shock to Christian boot camps.

Even the candlelight march after Milk's assassination seems less mournful than bovine. Then Jack Lira (Diego Luna), a Mexican American who became neurotically jealous of Milk's political life. Here he creates a character who may seem like an odd bird to mainstream America and makes him completely identifiable.

In many of the rally scenes that are set to be in the 1970s you can see the New Main Branch Library but according to records was not built until 1995.

"I think he's one of us," Milk confided. White was an alcoholic who all but revealed his sexuality to Milk during a drunken tirade, became unbalanced, resigned his position and on Nov. 27, 1978, walked into City Hall and assassinated Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

Why can't we all be what we prefer? But I'm not sure that this low-fat film will really help audience get Milk. At that watershed age, he grew unsatisfied with his life and decided he wanted to really do something.

We made it easy for you to exercise your right to vote. Was Van Sant afraid that audiences wouldn't be sympathetic if 70s-era gay activists were people who suffered, swore, fought back, and fucked like they meant it? Or sit down.

Not long before seeing "Milk," I viewed his work in "Dead Man Walking" again. Bitch, I've seen queers more fired up when Bed Bath & Beyond runs out of sale items. Here he creates a character who may seem like an odd bird to mainstream America and makes him completely identifiable.

for language, some sexual content and brief violence, Ebert Symposium 2020: Part 3 Streaming Today, November 5th, 2020, The Unloved, Part 83: Resident Evil: Retribution, The American Actor: Kevin Costner on Let Him Go.

He shows him as an ordinary man, kind, funny, flawed, shrewd, idealistic, yearning for a better world.

We don't always need to be burning police cars to prove our cred, but we shouldn't be inviting homophobes to the table, then singing their praises if they don't spit on us.

All rights reserved.

Today is National Voter Registration Day! The only gay supervisor, Milk was the only supervisor invited to the baptism of White's new baby. Already known as the Mayor of Castro Street, he won public office. Penn accurately portrays Milk as the polite public official determined to make social change. It is emotionally devastating. He acquired a personal bullhorn and stood on a box labeled "SOAP."

Milk was the right person in the right place at the right time, and he rose to the occasion. Get all the latest election results from across the country, with up-to-the-minute maps and more. He creates a character with infinite attention to detail, and from the heart out. He was in love with Scott Smith (James Franco), they moved to San Francisco, they opened a camera shop in the shadow of the Castro Theater and saw that even America's largest and most vocal gay community was being systematically persecuted by homophobic police. It's not about hugging Rick Warren and being satisfied that at least he's being nice about denying us our civil rights. Milk made a powerful appeal to closeted gays to come out to their families, friends and co-workers, so the straight world might stop demonizing an abstract idea.

Yes, but I have become so weary of the phrase "openly gay." Sean Penn amazes me.

Opinionator, communications strategist, and red meat-eating lesbian. Sometimes, at a precise moment in history, all it takes is for one person to stand up.

Though the camera pulls back to a wide screen view when gays riot against police randomly raiding bars along Castro Street and beating patrons, we never see a cop actually strike anyone, just a lot of carefully choreographed wrestling followed by a scene of Milk dabbing at a small patch of blood on his boyfriend's head.

Director Gus Van Sant's hagiography remains true to the facts of its subject's life while backing away from invoking the full-on, living color injustice, violence, passion, nerve, and sheer scruffy grassroots rage that fueled Milk and the emerging post-Stonewall Gay liberation movement.

Sean Penn amazes me.

If the street kids actually looked like dirty, starving, broke-ass teen hustlers? It's ACT UP and chaining ourselves to pharmaceutical companies' fences to protest AIDS drugs price gouging. In 1977, Harvey Milk became the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States.

Van Sant's gentrified Milk reflects gay activism's increasingly apologetic tone. Politeness has become homophobia's most popular mask.



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